This Weblog or "Blog" contains articles, events and opinions that support capital punishment in North Carolina and elsewhere. Author(s) of the contents are exercising their rights to free speech which unfortunately is often stifled or ignored by the media.
Contrary to what you might read or hear in the news, North Carolinians should be proud that an occassional and deserved execution is allowed to proceed.
- Wayne Uber

The Sister made a number of errors common to anti death penalty folks. With many of the religious, they only review the anti death penalty literature and refuse to fact check it. For Church leadership and for this debate, that represents a disservice to the truth, as well at to their flock.

1) The Sister contends that those Christians who support the death penalty are "people (that are) stalled in the Old Testament." "We read in the Bible, 'Jesus said, You have heard it said, 'An eye for an eye,' etc., 'but I say to you ...' " No! In effect, "Love one another" can't be kill one another."

REPLY: There is almost no end to the Saints, Popes, biblical and theological scholars who find New Testament support for the death penalty - Saints Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, for two.

2) The Sister claims: "There's a much better option - life imprisonment with no parole. Many outstanding members of the clergy have already testified to this."

REPLY: There is no "better" about life without parole. It is a decidedly different sanction than the death penalty. Juries have the option, between those two sanctions, thereby allowing them to choose what they find as the better of the two, for the crime before them. Neither the Sister nor those clergymen have expressed why locking up one another for life so expresses "love one another". Biblically, there is a well known distinction between how we, personally, respond to those who harm us and how the government should respond to those criminals who harm the innocent.

3) The Sister states: "That no mistakes have been made is a mistake to claim. Other states have discovered their fatal errors."

REPLY: Which states, Sister? There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900. The evidence is that the death penalty is a superior protector of innocents, over a life sentence.

4) The Sister states: "As to economics, it simply doesn't hold water to claim that a life sentence is more expensive than a death sentence. Researched data has disproved that position."

REPLY: Well, no. Some studies are simply horrible in their lack of thoroughness. And, if all states imposed the death penalty as does Virginia, then true life cases would, almost always, be more expensive than the death penalty.

Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS , VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.

A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally